Friday, 16 November 2012

The Tawny Owls were climbing around inside their hollow tree, occasionally emerging through the top or the side. The male spent a while in his usual place on the top of the broken trunk, but I have shown quite enough pictures of him here, and the one I took on this dark grey day is not interesting.

So instead here is a splendid picture taken by Alan Clubb, showing a Chaffinch landing on my hand for a snack of pine nuts and sunflower seeds. They tend to stay for some time, eating piece after piece, unlike the other small birds which generally hop on, grab something, and hop off again.

The Ring-Necked Parakeets, on the other hand, will perch on your hand and eat everything, rather slowly and messily. This gets to be quite boring, especially when you are trying to feed the small birds. It is better to give them a whole peanut in the shell, to keep them busy.

One of the pigeon-eating Lesser Black-Backed Gulls near the Dell restaurant had claimed another victim and was eating it as I passed.

On the other side of the lake, a young Lesser Black-Back had more frivolous things on its mind. It had found a bright blue plastic strap and was clearly fascinated by it, picking it up and dropping it and turning it round. I'm sure it didn't suppose the thing was edible. I think it was simply playing with it.

In the Italian Garden, one of the Moorhens was also having fun walking on the wire netting around one of the clumps of plants. There was no reason for it to be there. Moorhens just like climbing on things, and the harder it is to balance, the more they enjoy it.

About Me

I have been coming to the park for more than 60 years, and watching and feeding the birds. I am not an expert birder, but I know and love the park.
My main camera is a Pentax K-1 with a Pentax DFA 150-450mm zoom lens. At 7lb it is just light enough to carry for several hours. I also carry a Nikon Coolpix P900 for video and near shots where depth of field is required, and for very long shots where its enormous 83x zoom (equal to a 2000mm lens) is more important than a high-quality image.

This list is of all the birds, including rare visitors, that have been seen in the park since 1889. Sources include W.H. Hudson, 1898 (the naturalist in whose memory the Rima memorial was built); A.H. Macpherson, 1929; and various publications of the London Natural History Society (LNHS) from 1935 to 1993, with an appendix added by Roy Sanderson in 1995 to bring the total to 177 species. Since then it has been updated from LNHS bird reports, many of these from observations by Des McKenzie, who wrote the predecessor of this blog.